For most Americans, Bolivia is a third world
South American country last robbed by Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid. However this impoverished
nation is making headlines due to its Minister
of External Affairs recent announcement that
the Coca-Cola Company, one of the world’s
largest corporations, is to be booted out of
there by year’s end.

David Choquehuanca, the minister in question,
explained that Coca-Cola will be expelled from
Bolivia on the same day that the Mayan calendar
enters a new cycle–December 21. According
to Choquehuanca, the date marks the end of capitalism
and the start of a culture of life in community-based
societies. In order to celebrate that, Bolivia’s
government is already planning a series of events
that will take place at the Southern Hemisphere’s
Summer Solstice on La Isla del Sol, one of the
largest islands in Lake Titicaca.

“The twenty-first of December 2012 is
the end of selfishness, of division. The twenty-first
of December has to be the end of Coca-Cola and
the beginning of mocochinche (a local peach-flavored
soft drink),” Choquehuanca told reporters
at a political rally for Bolivia’s president,
Evo Morales. “The planets will line up
after 26,000 years. It is the end of capitalism
and the beginning of communitarianism,” he
added.

It’s already been rumored that Venezuela’s
president, Hugo Chavez, will follow suit, encouraging
his country to ditch the American beverage for
soft drinks produced locally.

It’s
curious that Bolivia decided to forbid Coca-Cola
in its territory, considering that one of the
soft drink’s main ingredients is said to
be coca extract (Coca-Cola refuses to confirm
that, saying that this is part of their secret
formula.)

Whether that is true or not, sales of coca
leaf are big business in Bolivia, accounting
for 2% of the country’s GDP, or approximately
$270 million annually, and representing 14%
of all agricultural sales. Besides, coca
is legally sold in wholesale markets in some
Bolivian cities. There’s even a cocaine
bar in La Paz.

The decision of Coca-Cola’s ban in
Bolivia came in a time when the country is
pledging to legalize the consumption of coca
leaves, which are notoriously processed clandestinely
into cocaine, and were declared an illegal
narcotic by the UN in 1961, along with cocaine,
opium and morphine, in spite of its consumption
being a centuries-old tradition there, strongly
rooted in the beliefs of various indigenous
groups.

“Neither the US nor capitalist countries
have a good reason to maintain the ban on
coca leaf consumption,” Morales has
been quoted as saying.

Although it may make sense for them to ban
Coca-Cola–which screams America and,
therefore, capitalism–it’s not
the first time that a US company had trouble
to find ground in Bolivia. After trying for
years to conquer Bolivians, McDonald’s
withdrew from the country in the early 2000s
for not being able to turn a profit there.

The fast-food giant failure was chronicled
in the highly-tendentious documentary ‘Why
McDonald’s Failed in Bolivia.’ The
movie goes by referencing surveys, sociologists,
nutritionists and historians, culminating
with McDonald’s conclusion that their
food wasn’t the issue, but a culturally
driven boycott against American companies.

That wasn’t the case for Coca-Cola[/entity],
though. According to the company’s
annual report, its presence in Bolivia has
grown considerably in the last few decades,
as in the rest of South America. Since 2001
consumption of Coke products has more than
tripled in Bolivia alone.